Berlin is an indisputably cool city. It is the punk-rock, graffiti-artist, high-school dropout of European capitals – the kind of character I am vaguely in awe of, slightly scared of, and will just never be. I was definitely in awe of the city; of its restored sections of Wall, complete with murals and graffiti, of the real-life punks, with shaven heads and hundreds of piercings, of the monumental, soviet, East Berlin architecture. But then, on our last morning in the city, my friends and I discovered Berlin’s oldest district, Nikolaiviertel, and I felt like I had found my little piece of Berlin. Nikolaiviertel is unmistakably medieval in appearance and character, though most of it has been restored since the Second World War. It is right at the centre of Berlin, between the Rathaus and Cathedral, very close to Alexanderplatz. But its small jumble of streets, just wide...

When you think of Spain, what springs to mind? I’ll bet the first things do not include weird rock formations, grand castles in provincial towns, or even chocolate. Yet this is the Spain I know, and it exists in a place north of Madrid and east of Galicia, a region called Castile-Leon. I was a bright-eyed, eager student who had just arrived in Asturias, a little-known province in northern Spain, for a five-month stint at the University of Oviedo. On one of my first weekends there, my friends and I joined a welcome trip put on for foreign students and set out to explore the neighbouring region Castile-Leon. I had no idea what to expect – just a few months earlier, I hadn’t even heard of the town I was living in, so it’s safe to say that northwest Spain was not my speciality. However, we soon stopped at our first point of interest: the World Heritage...

Mountains have the power to awe and inspire like no other landscape on earth. They remind us of our own insignificance in the world, they are a challenge to take on and they have an aesthetic, timeless pefection which leaves us weak at the knees. I spent much of last year living at high-altitude, waking up to views of the mountains, climbing them and even skiing down them. Now, living in a part of England which is as flat as a pancake, I miss the challenge and the beauty of mountains; I miss the way they make my soul sing. First there was France – a brief sojourn in the glorious Alps… After living for a while at the foot of the Pyrenees. My more recent ‘home abroad’ was Ancash in Peru, where the Cordilleras Blancas kept me in their thrall day after day. You can’t go far in Peru before you reach one mountain range or another –...

All good things come in threes – and Riccardo Di Capua came up with the title Triadic for Iain Mallory’s photo. That leaves just one more – you. Submit a photo which captures the theme Triadic and you could be our next Photo of the Week. Simply submit your pic to katy@starryeyedtravels(dot)com by Thursday 5th January and yours may become our featured photo! For more details about Photo of the Week, click here.

As we bring in the New Year, I will be more than ready to set sail once more on voyages across the seas, so perhaps it is quite apt that I will be dressed as a pirate, a costume I have to get sorted this week! However, I will be land-bound for much of this year as I train to be a teacher, so I’m going to have to plan my travel pretty carefully indeed. Now, planning ahead is not exactly my strong suit, so this is going to be a bit of a challenge. So I’m starting early, whittling down my wishlist to a few realistic destinations and thinking about short trips close to home that will nevertheless provide some unforgettable experiences. 1. Whale Watching, Scotland I have long wanted to explore the rugged Northern coast of Scotland and its even more northerly isles and I am desperate to make 2012 the year I finally get out on a boat to try and spot some whales. I have never seen...